Pallavi “Pooja” Sobun: Helping Student Athletes Excel
It’s late on a Friday night, and the quiet sound of crickets is echoing across the Great Lawn on the Queens campus of St. John’s University in New York. At one of the school’s entrances, Gate 4, some “Johnnies” are now coming home from their late-night endeavors.
At Carnesecca Arena, on the other side of campus, there’s plenty going on too. Here, the school’s famed Red Storm basketball team has a crowd revved up with their dribbling and free-throws, and the arena is filled with the thunder of loud cheers and ringing buzzers.
Still, not everyone is partying in New York City tonight. In one corner of Carnesecca, St. John’s student Pallavi Sharma Sobun, or “Pooja” as she’s called by her peers, is wrapping up a late-night study session with one of the student athletes she regularly tutors.
This is a typical night in the life of the 21-year-old native Mauritian. By day she is a speech language pathology and audiology major, while at night she’s both a neurological research assistant and a fiercely dedicated tutor.
“People think I’m smart, but I’m just hardworking,” Sobun says.
Wearing widescreen Ray-Ban glasses, the 5’2” international student often walks nonchalantly through campus, seemingly carefree, always with a smile on her face and happy to see anyone who passes her. It’s impossible to move 20 feet without someone — typically an athlete — waving “hello,” giving a classic “Pooja-high-five,” or even a hug.
“At first, I thought she was a little strange,” said Amira El Jebbari, an international student from Casablanca, Morocco. The two students first met at international student orientation, but it was only later that El Jebbari realized the degree to which Sobun cares about others. Mutual respect between the two was cinched when Sobun gave her a key chain from Mauritius., an island nation off the southeast coast of Africa.
Sobun’s American journey started in the fall of 2014, when she left her home in Port Louis, Mauritius. She came to St. John’s University to pursue her dream of becoming an audiologist for disabled children.
“My mother was an occupational therapist and she often would bring me to the clinic with her,” she explained. “There for a first time I shadowed a speech pathologist one day and I just knew I wanted to become one.”
In Mauritius, Sobun was an exemplary student. She graduated at the top of her class seven years in a row, and became fluent in seven different languages.
Now her everyday motivation springs from the example set by her parents.
“If they can get up and sacrifice all they have to make me live the good life, I should be able to do it for myself, “ she says. “In my three years of college, I’ve only been late to class four times and have never been absent.”
As a tutor, Sobun’s expertise ranges from biology, chemistry and physics to French, Hindi, and psychology. While her tutoring schedule depends on the individual needs of her students, a typical week might find her working with nine different student athletes in sports like baseball, lacrosse, women’s basketball and fencing.
“The grades are up to the students,” says Ray Howell, an associate director of academic support for student athletes at St. John’s. “One of the things we go by at the athletic academic center is that we can’t promise that one is going to get good grades, but what we could promise is that one will receive good services.”
According to Howell, Sobun is in high demand.
“Initially she was planning to work no more than seven hours per week, but due to her high effectiveness each student athlete currently applies for at least two extra tutorial hours with her per week,” he said.
Sobun is determined to disprove the stereotype that for many student athletes, academics clearly come second. But at the same time she realizes the need to stay both flexible and inventive.
“Once I was tutoring a basketball player who couldn’t understand the subject matter of a class,” she said. “I was thinking about a creative approach and I found one relating all the subject exercises to the rules of basketball. He ended up A-cing his midterm.”
According to Sobun, her tutees typically end up with a 3.9 grade point average. Besides her work as a tutor she is now also an official note taker at St. John’s for student athletes who have attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, or ADHD.
“I started working with Pooja on my chemistry projects about a month and a half ago, but now I seek her assistance for all subjects, even English, first,” says Gavin Hollowell, a freshman who is the St. John’s baseball team. “She’s one of the best tutors that I ever had and she is very flexible and always works with me around my practice schedule.”
Helping and giving all for others comes naturally to Sobun.
Before receiving her current position as a tutor for the athletic department, she applied for a position at St. Johns’ Academic Learning Center last March. But then weeks flew by without an answer from the center. Always the optimist, Sobun kept helping her athletic friends with their classes. Finally, a coach proposed a position at the Athletic Center, and without hesitation she accepted.
“I would do it even I am not getting paid,” Sobun said. “I do it because I love it. Every day I get an adrenaline rush from learning something new.”
Sobun is now furthering her passion for audiology by working as a neurological research assistant for a St. John’s professor, collecting data on how hearing is influenced by sounds that have with different phonemes, which are the smallest units of sound in speech. Meanwhile, Sobun is convinced that changing the world starts with both herself and those she helps.
“I totally disagree that people in today’s generation are more materialistic than humane,” she said. “I believe there’s goodness in people and I like to help others, because I like to see other people happy. Everything I do, I choose to do it with all my heart.”
At Carnesecca, the Johnnies game has now come to an end and the final siren of the last quarter has rung. The winning team is celebrating their win, while Sobun and her student are finishing up another study session. As usual, she’s encouraging.
“Today we are all winners, I know you’ll do well on your test tomorrow,” she says.
